


for all those wishes on planes we thought were stars

by lovesofoolishly



Category: One Direction (Band)
Genre: M/M, i don't know what to say about this, it starts in high school and ends with little old grey men, it's a happy ending, no one else is mentioned by name, who the fuck knows
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-22
Updated: 2014-05-22
Packaged: 2018-01-26 02:13:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,647
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1670939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovesofoolishly/pseuds/lovesofoolishly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>that's how it happened, kid, that's how we met/</i>
  <br/>
  <i>your grandfather, he knew me best/</i>
  <br/>
  <i>and as i'm standing here, on your wedding day/</i>
  <br/>
  <i>if papa was here now, i know what he'd say</i>
</p><p>or</p><p>they met at a party. from then on, the future is theirs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	for all those wishes on planes we thought were stars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [honeyed](https://archiveofourown.org/users/honeyed/gifts).



> i wrote this tiny little thing in one sitting while listening to [becki's](http://www.tunacolder.tumblr.com) beautiful song, [darling](http://tunacolder.tumblr.com/post/85827069203/so-i-got-the-idea-for-this-song-this-morning-and). beware: hazardous turns ahead.

The story started there. It started in a crowded room and the world is spinning in a way only teenagers can cause, beautiful and reckless and never quite as perfect come morning.

Almost never.

It was raucous and everything you never really see, the kind of filth that belongs on the TV screen, with empty cups and cigarette butts and AM blaring from the stereo in the corner, because that’s the kind of people Harry had found. He’d stumbled into high school with dusty hopes and his hands in his pockets, and come out six months later on top of the world, or at least so it felt. That night was a celebration, of exams finished and teachers bested and a summer ahead looking exactly like this party.

Handsome girls and beautiful boys filled every inch of the room, and Harry felt like only here could he really breathe. Maybe he wasn't alone in that; maybe he was just like everybody else. Still, it's why he’d come in the first place. Only, it slowly began to seem that the reason is the boy in the corner, Peter Pan come to life, with sharp and wicked eyes and a grin that could swallow the world.

Distance is relative in a setting like that: distance is closed as easily as cranking the volume on the shitty speakers, everyone creeping closer together in unison, because that’s all anyone came for—contact. Everyone wanted to feel, everyone wanted to numb out, string out, fuck off, fuck up, just for the night, and maybe that’s how the perfect Peter Pan stranger with hollow cheeks and the softest baby blues ended up in front of Harry. Maybe that’s how they ended up so intertwined—a thigh between legs, a hand groping for some sort of purchase, fingers carding hungrily through wild curls. Foreheads pressed together, and not a word was spoken. It was primal, innate connection, immediate and spellbinding, the kind only broken by morning light.

Only it wasn’t.

\--

It was sixteen year old boy losing his virginity at a drunken party, to a bloke two years older with gentle, probing fingers and eyes the size of baby moons. 

It was an eighteen year old boy in love with the world and the now and everything he couldn’t quite touch—a key, so to speak.

It was only supposed to be a fuck. Instead, both boys would swear up and down for years to come that the first kiss could’ve been felt round the world, and, maybe, they were right. Harry learned, begging for a name to tack onto his moans as he chased his orgasm, that the other lad was Louis, and it fit his lips so perfectly it was a wonder he hadn’t just _known_. Louis caught Harry’s only in the aftermath, in a strange house and a stranger bed trailing dirty fingers along a sweat-soaked spine.

“ _You never asked, but I’m Harry. You’re not going to ask, but I don’t think I'll ever forget you._ ”

Love could never burn, could never really bruise, when those few words were all it took to send Louis under.

He started falling then, and he never quite stopped.

It’s okay—Harry fell right with him.

The first kiss, the first _true_ kiss, was planets aligning and discovering water on Mars and maybe even seeing a baby animal open it’s eyes for the very first time. It was Louis, hearing something so simple and honest in what Harry had offered, and reaching out to take his hand.

Their voices murmured with the night sky, filling the time and space where half the world sleeps and the other half rises. Because Harry was an artist, a doe-eyed boy with universes trapped in his mind like a perfect ball of yarn, waiting to be caught on film. And Louis, Louis could write and could act and could sing and knew how to change the tyre on a broken-down car, but in being so scared of the rut of forever, of growing up, he’d somehow lost his way. Harry knew every corner of himself, could poke and creep into crevices and be pleased with the dust he’d turn up, while Louis wanted nothing more than to crawl into a blank page and sleep, because that at least felt safe.

If kisses were wishes, they made them all that night, wanting nothing more than this to do.

\--

Afterwards, they were everything. They were summer wind, and rain, and shine, driving fast in the car and Louis constantly running red lights because Harry looked _so_ perfect, eyes like the day after rain and words like fireworks.

Ages seventeen and nineteen find them in the same position, in a different bed, a different house, but the same toes brushing freshly-tattooed ankles, same fingers tracing now-shorn curls. And Harry loved, with everything he had and knew. Louis had promised two months prior not to leave without him, putting off a year or so of uni to save money and wait for his boy, his sweetest hello, his little bird (now nearly taller than him). It was sickening like the frosting on a grocery store cake, and yet absolutely perfect for the two boys so lost in such a big, wide world.

It would work out, it would always work out, and whenever doubts struck, Louis always had the same words, pressed like kisses against the shell of Harry's ear.

“ _They say love is blind, Hazzabear, but my eyes are wide open. They say love is cruel, but I think that’s just them. I’m always happy, darling, even when I’m blue—because life’s been so good since I’ve met you._ ”

\--

Twenty and twenty-two is a flat just outside of London and more than a few dead-end jobs. It’s, “baby, let me take care of you." It’s late night dates with textbooks while Louis bartends at the nearby pubs.  It’s every shitty student cliche come true, and somehow Harry falls asleep with a smile on his lips _every single night_ —even as louis swears his own degree is a waste, that he's a waste, even as Harry's teachers hands him back sub-par papers with disappointed faces, even as Harry is turned down for internship after internship, he'd still be smiling, because he knows, has always known, that life with Louis was better than anything else the world had to offer.

They grow up and grow out, together, moving into bigger flats in nicer cities, and Harry had been right when he told Louis that, someday, they’d be more than just _okay_.

Louis had been raised on a steady stream of vemon, of, “you’ll never make it anywhere, you’re worthless as a writer, you can’t concentrate for shit, sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up.” Harry had only known honey. Harry only knew how to say, in the softest, kindest way, that someday the rain would end and Louis would still be shining brighter than anyone, at least to him. And somehow, it was enough. Somehow, it was enough to settle down and walk towards the future at a steady pace, instead of burning up before he’d hit the ground, like Louis has always thought he’d been made to do. because he had always been told he was kerosene, and Harry could never have been anything other than a perfect patch of clover.

\--

They traced the years in haircuts and tattoos, in jobs and flats and the ever-shifting skyline, and Harry couldn’t even remember the days when he’d believed love was a perfect song or sonnet, and not the man sharing his bed. Not the man wearing his ring.

The world became a quieter place, still filled with bombs and wars and hunger and poverty, but now, two men could marry in a small ceremony in their hometown church, could adopt a baby girl in peace, and that’s all they’d ever wanted, really.

Forever was no longer a threat to Louis—it was the promise of Harry. Growing up wasn’t a punch to the gut—it was Harry changing his surname to Tomlinson.

They were a writer and an artist, living each experience through both mediums, through each other. Eventually, when the dust had settled and their daughter needed more solid ground beneath her unsteady feet, they became a teacher and a baker.

They were HarryandLouis, would be until the day they died.

HarryandLouis watching their little girl, not so little anymore, drive off in her first car. HarryandLouis walking her down the aisle, her delicate arms linked to them both. Harry going grey and Louis going bald, Harry’s tattoos wrinkling against his skin and Louis’ contacts irritating his eyes to the point where now, he only ever wore glasses. Harry had always sworn he liked that look best, anyway.

HarryandLouis up until the day Louis’ body wasn’t his own—and he was betrayed by his very bones.

Harry watching Louis shrink, always so much smaller than him and fading fast. Harry watching as the boy who’d touched him with ink-stained fingers that very first night could no longer be able to lift his head from his sterile hospital pillow.

Harry listening, trembling, as Louis told him, just one last time: “ _They said love was blind, Hazzabear, but my eyes were open this whole time. They say love is cruel, but they didn’t about know us. I’ve always been happy, darling, even when I was blue—because my life’s been so good since I’ve met you._ ”

\-- 

It’s okay. Stars are meant to fade, and if it takes Harry just a few more years to get to where Louis went, well, at least he got to pass on a few simple words to their eldest grandson on his wedding day. Louis would’ve loved to be there, but maybe, through those old tried-and-true phrases, he was, in the end.

\--

Their life had been so good.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> that's all! happy days! chat me up on [tumblr](https://www.tomlintrash.tumblr.com)!


End file.
